The land is shrouded inn a ash-laden haze: a winter evening filled with gloom and foreboding. Scene from an English countryside, perhaps, where “The Hounds of the Baskervilles” is about to unfold.
Only it is
not. This is San Jose in Northern California. The clock says it’s 9 in the
morning, but the sun lies hidden behind wildfire smoke so thick that stepping
outside poses serious breathing problems. Earlier, in the predawn sky where Venus used to glow brightly, I saw a pale tangerine planet barely able to hold its own.
Wildfires are
on a tear in Western United States. Idyllic, pastoral towns are aflame and burnt
out. People and trees are being uprooted at a scale never seen before. The ravaged, desolate landscape tells tales of nature’s sound and fury signifying
everything.
In California,
hundreds of freakish lightnings, utterly unanticipated by meteorologists - so
much for our hubris of predicting and controlling the weather, far less the
climate - started the terrifying fires, carried relentlessly forward, backward and sideways
by hot winds that devoured everything in its way. We suffered long periods of
blackouts but that was nothing compared to those who lost everything - homes,
possessions. No accurate counting of lives lost is yet possible, but it will be
tragic when the final tally is in, each death diminishing us all.
This, on top
of the killer pandemic that has so far claimed more than 200,000 American lives.
Misfortunes, as the saying goes, never comes singly.
The worst
nightmare, of course, is the malevolent president who denies climate change, who
calls those who made the ultimate sacrifice for America “losers” and “suckers.”
Americans must surely know by now the existential threat this president
poses to America and its values, to its standing in the world. We hope this grievous wrong will be righted in the November 3rd election this year.
For now,
though, we must turn our attention to nature. It is telling us that time is fast running
out. Burning fossil fuels to sustain our "quality of life" is unsustainable. Droughts, wildfires, hurricanes, famines, even civil wars
are only another climate catastrophe away.
Yet we also know
that given half a chance, nature will spring back. But for that to happen, we need a quantum
leap in our thinking about consumption, development, and all the quotidian things
we do that needs to be suffused with an awareness of their impact on the environment.
Impractical? The alternate is fiery death.
In the air
opaque with wildfire smoke and without birdsong, I risk a walk along the wooded trail that works
its magic every time I am on it. Giant eucalyptus and pine trees
stand like ghosts just a few feet away from me, hardly visible.
And then I
see it and I stand rooted to the earth. A bluebird is resting on a pine cone, calm and poised. An ineffable
sense of hope surges in me. Give me a chance, a small, tiny chance, nature seems
to be saying, and I will make the air breathable, the water potable, and the birds transcendent again.
